Vireo griseus
Order Passeriformes
Family Vireonidae
Adult.— Upper parts greenish-yellow in strong light; throat grayish-white; line from bill to and around eye yellow; sides and belly very yellow; wing-bars yellowish; iris white, visible at a greater distance than the red iris of the Red-eyed Vireo.
Nest, a cup hung from a fork in a low horizontal bough, sometimes from a vine.
Eggs, like the Red-eye’s.
The White-eyed Vireo is a common summer resident in southern Connecticut and in the vicinity of New York city, but is rather local in Massachusetts, and absent north of that State. It arrives early in May, and stays through September. It frequents tangled thickets, particularly in lowlands. It seems to be a more excitable bird than the other Vireos, and begins to scold and sing whenever its thicket is approached. It greets a visitor with a startlingly energetic song, containing the notes chip-whee-oo. Besides this phrase the White-eye has a great variety of notes, many of them imitative of other birds; I have heard it give the chip-churr of the Tanager and the dick’-you of the Chewink. Its scolding-note is a mew, suggesting that of the Catbird.
The White-eyed and Solitary Vireos both have a strong yellow tinge on the sides of the belly, but in the former the line to and around the eye is yellow, while in the latter it is white. The White-eye is small and is rare north of Connecticut; the Solitary is larger and breeds in northern New England, passing through southern New England and the Hudson Valley before the White-eye arrives.
Hoffmann – A Guide to the Birds of New England and Eastern New York (1904)